Thread: Small farms?

Originally Posted by mcrover

.........If you cant borrow it, hire it as buying these things isnt really viable for a small property.

Hiring certainly has its place, but is a bit of a problem if you live far from town.

John

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Further details on my experience - I particularly wanted a tractor with a blade as I have quite a few kilometres of roads to keep trafficable.

I spent a lot of time looking in the Land and the local papers both for advertised tractors and for clearing sales. I followed up several advertisements and went to a number of clearing sales, bidding on several. I finally got a 75hp Chamberlain 306, over thirty years old, with a blade, for $3200. That was about half the price of comparable machines, and the reason, I think, is that the sale had four tractors, and this was the third one sold. (I have seen similar tractors in reasonable condition sell recently for $7-12,000, depending very much on the strength of the bidding on the day and the state of the tyres.

That was over ten years ago, and since then the only expenses except for filters, oil and fuel have been a rollover protection bar, a second hand cab, a clutch plate, a tie rod end, a tyre repair and a radiator hose, plus a pair of rear tyres - cost about $1200 for the pair with a trade in allowance of $200 for the one that was not blown. I have added lights and a UHF. It is mostly used for road work but I have used it extensively for fencing and stick raking. I have been looking for a slasher for some time but have not managed to find one at what I regard as a reasonable price.

John

Best tractor ever built, strong as anything, can pull huge implements, heavy enough to have great traction but light enough not to bog everywhere and comfortable for a tractor of its age.

I have sat in one of those loovered cabs for many hours hay raking and bailing.

For an 8 acre block, are the MF TEA's the go? I guess mainly slashing and moving stuff around.

Originally Posted by UncleHo

G'day Pedro

You wouldn't mean a John Deere by any chance

actually I thought it was david brown

Originally Posted by Slunnie

For an 8 acre block, are the MF TEA's the go? I guess mainly slashing and moving stuff around.

They arnt Massy Ferguson in the TEA's just Freguson and they are a little under powered in the petrol but very capable.

Ours has been the only tractor on 640acres, towing a trailer, slashing with a sythe mower as well as a 5' slasher as well as use with a Jib and a saw bench.

1958 I think it is so it is nearly 60 years old and now sitting on blocks as my cousin runs the farm now and has his own tractors.

There isnt much that would be better for a small hobby farm other than a little Kubota or maybe something Korean as you can pick them up new for cheap these days, basically copies of 15 yo Kubotas and implements as well.

Aah. I didn't realise this. I'd been looking at them on Ebay for a while. Thanks for this mcrover. I assume parts are pretty easy to pick up for them also with their popularity?

I have an old Fiat 411R (40hp diesel) as my odd-job tractor. I bought it years ago for $200 as it was running on only 3 of its 4 cyls. Fixed it by tightening the loose injector pipe. Its had a new piston (hole in old one), has a leaking radiator so doesn't have a cap, tie-rod ends only just holding together but so what, its still the most used tractor of the 3 I have (carry-all/small sprayer/jib crane/hay rake). I've only recently got some headlights working - magical on dark nights not havng to hold a torch! Only real problem is that it keeps running out of fuel, as it goes so long on a tank that I forget to check the level occasionally.

You can get slashers that are self powered and tow behind a quad bike, I looked at them at one stage but once you add up the costs it's probably cheaper to buy a ride on.
Sometimes at clearing sales you can get bigger HP tractors (75+ at a more reasonable cost as the hobby farming set don't want them but they do have the drawback of higher maintainence costs and fuel consumption and they may have had a harder life.
Maybe look at offsetting the costs of decent plant by doing a bit of contract work?
Regards,
Tote